Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The road to build an artificial sun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbQpfzEOCCM

Because of the difficulties for its observation, until recently alone it was known that the sun emitted energy and visible matter at certain distance (solar flares) and that in its interior it housed sunspots (dark visible points, with temperatures 50 % smaller to their surroundings). In order to overcome this hardship of knowledge, NASA, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland and some Institutes of Physics of Great Britain (photographic cameras and Heliospheric Image: HI, in charge of following Coronal Mass Ejections CMEsin their route toward the Earth), they launched in Octubre/2006, 2 twins probes (STEREO:Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory, carrying each one almost identical laboratories), orbiting the Earth, one ahead the other one, in order to obtain 3D images of the Sun. According to Mike Kaiser, scientific of Stereo Project, Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center, the novelty of the Stereo probes is its 3D power. When moving one ahead the other one they obtain combined images of the sun, similar to those elaborated by the stereoscopic human capacity (visual perception of depth and distances, provided by 2 eyes separated 7,5 cm among them) vision that achieves images with lightly different perspectives. The brain fuses the images, understands the differences and uses them to calculate distances.

The expertsbelieve that the study of these images: I) will improved our understanding of sun physics, being achieved a better knowledge of the violent launching of billions tons of ionized particles of the sun toward the earth (Coronal Mass Ejections: CMEs). When a cloud of CMEs collides with magnetic terraqueous fields, causes magnetic storms that alter terraqueous sources of power, overturn satellite systems (GPS, Galileo System) and can affect astronauts. Thanks to this knowledge, it is hoped to make protective shields for ships and astronauts. II) will improved our ability to model and to predict exo-metereologic events (spatial). Dr. Russell Howardof Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, main investigator of Secchi (Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation) said ”we have seen fine filaments of plasm (ionized matter), leaving the center of the sun connecting opposed poles of the same one. Richard Harrisonof Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire adds "colaterally, we have seen highly structured lines of comets indicating iron presence, barely visible asteroids, planets and stars”. With this knowledge certainly we are paving the road to build by means of atomic fission an fusion an artificial sun.

In this link (Spiegel online), you will find 22 sun's pictures in 3D.To appreciate them in all their magnitude, try to build your own 3D eyeglasses. For it :1) Designs and elaborate 2 halves of eyeglasses, with holes for the eyes using strong poster cardboard 2) Link the halves of the eyeglasses with tape scotch 3) Cover the holes of the eyes with transparent (glass paper, but big than the opening of the eyes) paper : red color (left eye) and blue color (right eye).